Donald Trump's new Pentagon spokesman has some troubling abuse allegations of his own.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was confirmed last month despite his former sister-in-law claiming he abused her sister and an old email from his mother making similar allegations. On Monday he announced his official mouthpiece Sean Parnell, who was forced to drop a Senate bid in late 2021 over abuse accusations by his estranged wife, reported The Daily Beast.
“She described many incidents,” wrote Butler County, Pennsylvania, Judge James Arner in an order granting Laurie Snell sole custody of their three children. “She provided factual details of each incident, including when they happened and what happened. She testified in a convincing manner.”
Snell had testified in court that Parnell had repeatedly abused her and their children, choking her and hitting one of their children so hard he left a welt on the child's back. She said he once punched a closet door, which caused a bruise on one of their children's faces, and he then told the child it was their fault.
She also testified that Parnell left her on the side of the road without a vehicle and told her to “go get an abortion.”
The 43-year-old Parnell, who was senior adviser at Concerned Veterans for America while Hegseth ran the organization, is a decorated combat veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan while serving in the U.S. Army.
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“A Great American Patriot, Sean is a fearless Combat Veteran, who led one of the most decorated units in the Afghanistan War,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “He earned two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart, while his platoon achieved an incredible record of eliminating over 350 enemy fighters.”
Parnell, who lost a 2020 House race in Pennsylvania to Democrat Conor Lamb, has denied the abuse allegations, telling the court he “never raised a hand in anger towards my wife or any of our three children.”
The judge, however, found Snell's testimony was “convincing,” while finding Parnell, on the other hand, “somewhat evasive” and “less believable.”
“He was dressed very casually for his appearances in court, in blue jeans and untucked plaid shirts, which did not show respect for the seriousness of the occasion,” the judge wrote. “While testifying he looked mainly in the direction of his attorneys and toward members of the news media in the back of the courtroom, rather than at me.”
